YouTube exec Hunter Walk says (via Mark Suster) that you should write blog posts not to show how smart you are, but to get feedback on your thoughts from other smart people - because that's a great way to learn. How can you engage with smart people though? Here's how you can do it using Little Bird. Maybe you're already a Little Bird user, or maybe these strategies will inspire thoughts otherwise.

Think of some keywords for your blog post or project.

Run Little Bird reports on those keywords. We'll find up to 500 of the most connected, peer-validated people online who specialize in that topic.

Visit the Compare pages of those reports and find top people already in your community that you can Direct Message (DM) on Twitter. If you aren't connected to any of the top experts in a topic, you should engage with them, add value and establish a relationship.

DM them and ask if you can send them a draft of what you're working on.

Incorporate any valuable feedback they send.

Once you're done, DM people who did and didn't get back to you, closing the loop and sharing with them the finished product. If it's good, some percentage of them will reshare that content with the big networks they've established and which Little Bird used to discover them.

You can also use the Search function to find blog posts written by top experts in your field that contain certain keywords. You can quote those blog posts to enrich your content and link to them to draw their influential attention to your content. You can also find their email address on their blog and email them asking for input on a draft.

Below: I could DM any of these experts on the topic of Incubators and ask for their input on a relevant blog post. They already follow me on Twitter.

Ta da! That's how Little Bird customers in media organizations, and I myself, have used Little Bird to add collaborative value and increased distribution to our blog posts. Do these ideas inspire any other ideas in you? Please share them here!